What's more of a limitation on computer manufactures--address bus, cpu
capacities, memory mediums or some other component?  Please provide
excerpts with links to the source articles and any background
information you have from your own personal studies as well.  Please
be specific as to which component restricts manufacturers the most
(currently and over the long run).  Thanks.

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Clarification of Question by musicandmore-ga on 24 May 2004 05:19 PDT

The one question I would like answered is, which component limits pc
manufactures most, whether from research or personal background info. 
If you know the answer and you don't need to do the research I would
appreciate it if you indicated and corroborated your answer with
supplemental information (not necessarily from research but from your
own understanding).  For example, if the biggest problem is the dram,
please explain that the material which dram is built with is the best
material we know of, and only has such and such a capacity, or
something along those lines.  If you're kind, you might do a little
research for the nominal amount I'm paying.  thanks.

For $2, the price you've set on your question, you might reasonably
expect a response of one or two links and maybe a few sentences of
text. If you're looking for more than that, I strongly suggest that
you increase your price.

Whatever you can do for 2 bucks will be very much appreciated.  I'm
not cheap, just poor!

Howdy musicandmore-ga,

In my educated opinion, it is actually software that is current biggest
limitation on computer manufacturers.  The hardware is ready (or almost)
ready to go to 64-bits, but the software, and that specialized software
known as a driver, are lacking support for operating systems and hardware
that is 64-bit capable.  The Computerworld web site has more.
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/windows/story/0,10801,92926,00.html?SKC=windows-92926

"Bill Gates doesn't want a lack of hardware drivers to slow adoption of
64-bit software"

Looking Forward, denco-ga - Google Answers Researcher

computer manufacturers biggest limitation is marketing. its becoming
increasingly difficult to compete with the likes of dell by selling
inferior hardware at unreasonable prices. unlike was the trend in the
past, many manufacturers are not making money because they have such
cutthroat competition, whereas in the past the computer game was a
high profit margin one won by the company that got the best retail
positioning.

based on the quality I've seen of retail computers, this is not
entirely different today. most manufacturers of computers sold in the
retail channel are clearly more concerned with marketing their product
and making it "look" good than the actual performance of same. If the
user doesn't know what a bus speed is but knows more megahertz is
good, they don't care that the bus is limiting the computers
performance, as the actual performance doesn't matter to them, just
the perceived.

As a matter of fact, for computer makers selling to the inexperienced
masses who don't know a memory bus from a disk drive, it is in their
favor to sell good sounding computer with poor performance, because it
means the consumer will buy the newer faster model sooner than they
would if they bought a properly optimized machine.